UK Election: how the establishment smeared Nicola Sturgeon

The day after the 2nd-live TV election debate a Telegraph story broke claiming the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) Nicola Sturgeon had previously confided she would prefer David Cameron to remain Prime Minister over a new Ed Miliband administration. This was allegedly relayed to a French ambassador and accounted for in the meeting notes of a British government civil servant.

Sturgeon quickly and emphatically denied this and the ambassador supported her. Despite the denials and lack of hard evidence, the tory press pushed the story with opportunistic Labour egging it on - leading to SNP stickers on the offending headline below.

*Staggeringly*, the Telegraph online story STILL doesn't carry any of the denials from the people involved. http://t.co/UmeHhhYG7q
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) April 4, 2015

Labour's opportunism over an unconfirmed story from a known tory paper and mouthpiece for bankers was relentless

Devastating: @Telegraph reporting Nicola Sturgeon secretly backs Cameron #voteSNPgetTories http://t.co/GrJpzscfbO pic.twitter.com/a4BkLytTMZ
— Scottish Labour (@scottishlabour) April 3, 2015

But called out by some.

@UKLabour @Labour #UKLabour Miliband has just lost my vote by playing along with Telegraph and Mail lies about Nicola Sturgeon. Stupidity!
— Fred Litten (@FredLitten) April 4, 2015

The whole sorry saga was summed up as follows:

Either @Telegraph is badly wrong, or UK civil service is scheming against Sturgeon. Either way, British establishment is rocking. #GE2015
— Liam O'Hare (@Liam_O_Hare) April 3, 2015